The Point of Scholarship

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Education has an article about criticisms and criticisms of criticisms of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. It’s hard to tell without reading a great many academic blog posts (I read part of one and decided that was more than enough of that), but it all seems to have a whiff of self-righteous orthodoxy-sniffing about it. But since I haven’t actually read all those academic blog posts, I could be wrong about that. But in any case, Jaschik turned up one comment – by a commenter at Crooked Timber – that sounds like exactly the kind of thought that started B&W on its erratic but dogged course.

Both Savage Minds pieces seem to exhibit one of the worst tics of the academic left — a tendency to evaluate arguments exclusively with reference to whether or not they might, in some distorted form, serve the rhetorical purposes of one’s political opponents. It’s exactly the same approach to debate you find coming from the most thuggish members of the war party – whole lines of argument (e.g., Do our actions lead to more terrorism?) are ruled out from the start on the grounds that they stray too close to the other side’s manner of thinking. What is so depressing about this approach isn’t just that it’s bad scholarship. It’s that it rests on a complete misunderstanding of the point of scholarship, or at least a refusal to see arguments as anything rhetorical strategies.

9 Responses to “The Point of Scholarship”

I haven’t got(ten) round to tackling “Guns, Germs and Steel”, other than skimming through its first few pages, and the odd passage elsewhere. Nevertheless, that won’t stop me from commenting here! (Was it Oscar Wilde who said that he never reads a book he is going to review as that would only prejudice him?) So a couple of minor points is all I can muster. I found myself irritated by Diamond’s parading his anti-racist credentials. Also by his saying that there are no innate differences of intelligence between different racial groups – but that New Guineans are more intelligent than any other group.

There’s an interesting review of Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” on the ReasonOnline website:

“Meanwhile, Diamond calls on Americans, Europeans, and Japanese to reject their “traditional consumer values.” So in essence, Diamond’s solution to the problems he believes humanity faces is to reduce the living standards of the world’s wealthiest societies (U.S., Europe, Japan) and curb economic growth in the poorer countries. This is Malthus’ legacy at its worst, and when Diamond embraces it, Collapse collapses into claptrap.”

If this is an accurate report of what Diamond advocates, it’s not very impressive. My objection is not so much that, as Bailey says, he is effectively asking the world’s wealthiest societies to voluntarily reduce their standard of living. It is that he is advocating something that is just not going to happen in the foreseeable future. This is an intellectually cheap way of putting himself on the side of the angels while not making a serious (ie, realizable) proposal about the problem he is purporting to address.

If I’m being unfair to Diamond, I’m sure there are people out there who will let me know.

It’s interesting that Guns, Germs and Steel is setting off such heated debates 8 years after it first appeared…. but then it tackles such fundamental questions about race, human nature and civilization that it’s sure to be contentious to many people. The recent appearance of Collapse probably helped to remind people of the earlier book.

I haven’t read Collapse yet, but Guns Germs and Steel may have had a greater influence on my thinking than any other book. It synthesizes such a vast quantity of information from so many different fields, and can really open your eyes to perspectives about human history you’d never even remotely considered.

I’m sure there are serious objections to be raised to at least some of Diamond’s arguments, and would read them with interest. The historian William H. McNeil raised some in a NYRB article when Guns first appeared, basically calling into question the all-embracing scope of Diamond’s model. But it seems to me that many people critical of the book, both then and now, are a little confused about what Diamond is trying to do. Some of this confusion seems to be about “necessary” and “sufficient” causes. Sufficient causes are those which, all on their own, are enough to trigger a particular effect. Necessary causes need to be there, but need to be augmented by other causes to get the job done.

It seems that Diamond’s model is intended as a “necessary” cause. Diamond thinks that traditional historical accounts of human history failed because they didn’t account for patterns of crop/animal distribution, geographical/climate variation, etc, as he does in his work. He does NOT seem to be saying that his model is itself SUFFICIENT to explain all of human history. Yet, this is what many of his critics seem to think he is saying. They think that he considers the insights of traditional social sciences unimportant, when he is merely trying to provide a deeper and more accurate model than they have been able to provide.

Interesting about McNeil. I think I saw that review at the time – but I’m damned if I can remember anything about it. It’s interesting that he should be the one to question the scope, because he pioneered that kind of history. His Plagues and Peoples is the same kind of eye-opening, ‘oh that would be a factor, wouldn’t it,’ background-seeing book. Surely it must have been one of Diamond’s inspirations.

“It’s interesting that he should be the one to question the scope, because he pioneered that kind of history. His Plagues and Peoples is the same kind of eye-opening, ‘oh that would be a factor, wouldn’t it,’ background-seeing book.”

Yes, and if I recall correctly, something I read in Guns, Germs and Steel led me to McNeil’s writings. I’m sure that his own interest in plagues and other intersections of natural sciences and human history is a major reason for his assignment to review Guns in NYRB.

The review has also faded from my memory, but I remember that it was a generally positive review that criticized the scope of explanation he took Diamond to be claiming for his model. There was also an exchange in a later issue of NYRB in which Diamond responded to McNeil’s criticism, and McNeil was given the last word. Diamond’s response mentioned something about “different levels of explanation,” and how his books was intended to enhance rather than supplant other models of human history (I think). McNeil did not seem saisfied with this response, since he seemed to think that Diamond was emphasisizing the influence of natural and geographical factors to a degree that contradicted better, traditionally historical explanations.

It’s worthwhile noting that the academic right are not immune to this tendency either. Witness Windschuttle and the arguments about his wacko reading of Australia’s past.

The meta-problem here is groupthink: the tendency when reading to ask the question ‘Is s/he on my side?’ before I ask the question ‘Is this bollocks?’

I can control it (I think) in an academic context, in which admitting “I was wrong” when confronted with proof actually has some cachet in many research areas (certainly in mine). I’m less good at controlling it in other contexts. Partly this is because most polititalk is just opinion with sod all to back it up, so it’s very hard to test it empirically.

How do we get out of the groupthink bind? I have a terrible worry that blogs make the problem wors, not better.

“How do we get out of the groupthink bind? I have a terrible worry that blogs make the problem worse, not better.”

Sadly, that’s probably true. I notice that, on most blogs, commenters who don’t toe the party line get banned mighty quickly. After that, the law of group polarization kicks in and everybody huddles together in one cozy little klatch and steers hard right (or left) rudder, usually onto a reef. Luckily, that would never happen here, among such sensible broad-minded people.